


Various FFVII Meta Pieces

by Megpie71



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2018-11-14 10:52:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11206569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megpie71/pseuds/Megpie71
Summary: Various bits of meta-fictional work regarding Final Fantasy VII.  Contains head-canon, character analysis, and all sorts of other stuff like that.





	1. Cloud Strife isn't an Emo Teenager

Something which has been slightly bothering me over the last however many aeons is the way a lot of fan-fiction writers in FFVII fandom tend to characterise Cloud Strife as a whiny emo USA-style suburbanite teenaged boy. I'd argue that this isn't a role he ever had a chance to play.

From the original game canon, we know that Cloud left his hometown of Nibelheim at the age of fourteen to join the Shinra military (it's mentioned at the beginning of the game that he made a promise to Tifa before leaving the town "seven years ago" - and the game handbook gives Cloud's age at the start of the game as 21). So at age 14, Cloud Strife is making an adult decision to take on an adult role within the society he inhabits. He stops being a child, and becomes an adult, and is expected by the society he inhabits to react in an adult fashion.

When Cloud returns to Nibelheim two years later, he's sixteen years old. He has spent the past two years doing an adult's job in an adult role. He hasn't been in school, or performing a dead-end job while he attempts to get training for something else. He's been doing an actual adult job which requires him to be willing to kill or be killed on a daily basis. He's an adult. Yes, in the flashbacks he does appear to be reacting like a whiny kid - but that's probably a combination of firstly, not remembering at least half of what actually went on with any degree of accuracy (his memories are tangled with Zack's memories at the time, and the ones which aren't were scrambled by a long dose of mako poisoning) and secondly, of being reduced back to childhood status by his mother. 

At the time, Cloud goes through a number of traumatising events. He's nearly killed, and then becomes an experimental subject for five years. But he does these as an adult, not a child or a teenager (as we know it).

The status of "teenager" or "adolescent" is one which is a liminal state between childhood and adulthood, and it's one which is peculiar to WEIRD[1] cultures since approximately the middle of the 20th century. Prior to this point, there was childhood, there was adulthood, and there was nothing in between. Children became adults through the process of taking on adult roles in the community, or through various rites of passage - marriage was a popular one. So Cloud passed out of his childhood when he left Nibelheim; by the time he reached Midgar, he was culturally an adult, and considered capable of making adult decisions. 

If a fan writer is looking for an analogue for Cloud Strife's situation at the end of the original FFVII canon, it isn't that of a teenager who has just grown up - he did that years ago. Instead, you're looking at an adult soldier who has been involved in a war, was captured and tortured behind enemy lines for five years, and who had broken free to regain his freedom, only to discover that now the war is over everywhere except in the silence of his own skull. Look at the accounts of soldiers who survived shell-shock in World War I and World War II for templates, or better yet, look for accounts of what happened to soldiers who returned to Britain from the Napoleonic wars (particularly Peninsular War veterans). 

[1] Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic


	2. Cloud Strife: Physical Notes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some notes about the physical appearance of Cloud Strife

To correct a few small points about Cloud Strife from FFVII:

* He's probably not actually that "girly" looking in drag. He's taller than both Aerith and Tifa, and while he has a rather androgynous face, his musculature is very much masculine. He'll be flat-chested, and he'll have slender hips relative to his waist, which on a purportedly female silhouette actually translates visually to "thick waist". It's even alluded to in the infamous "drag" scene, if you get picked by Don Corneo (having picked up all the relevant plot coupons to do so) - the Don chooses "this hearty girl" (which is probably at least part of why Cloud's wearing a wig with braids, since he's playing up the "stout country lass" theme). To be honest, the main reason Cloud passes as a girl in the drag scene is probably because Don Corneo really _isn't_ expecting a guy, and both Tifa and Aerith treat him as being another girl.

* He isn't all that short. He's listed as being 5'7" (due to an error in arithmetic by the US localisers - if you actually do the translation back from centimetres to inches, you discover he's actually between 5'8" and 5'9". He's 5.7 feet tall, which isn't the same as 5 feet 7 inches, because there are twelve inches in a foot) which is barely on the short end of normal for a man in most Western countries, but it's definitely on the tall end of normal for a woman. By contrast, the women in the party are canonically shorter than Cloud is - Tifa is 5'4"; Aerith is 5'3"; and Yuffie is 5'2". The guys are all taller, I'll grant you - Barret is a giant at 6'4" (and built like a brick outhouse with it - Barret probably knows the location of every single "Big and Tall Menswear" shop on Gaia), Cid is marginally taller than Cloud at 5'8" (if Cloud's short, so is Cid... odd nobody appears to want to mention this - particularly not to Cid), and Vincent is 6'0". Sephiroth, by the way, is 6'1", as is Zack. 

* For KH/Dissidia fans, Squall Leonhart is 5'8" as well; something which is recognised in KH2, where the two of them are standing back to back, and they're approximately the same height. Cloud's fighting stance is lower than Leon's, which accounts for most of the rest of the difference. Squall Leonhart is also canonically younger than Cloud Strife - Cloud starts his game at age 21, Squall starts at age 17.

* For slashers in particular, this means the height difference between Cloud and the guys he's most commonly paired with (Sephiroth and Zack) is approximately six inches, or about half a head's difference. He wouldn't need to stand on a box to kiss either of them, and they wouldn't need to bend down very far to kiss him (for reference, I'm 5'2", and my partner is 6'0", which is a 10" difference; if I stand on the stair above him, I'm looking him in the eye. We can manage to kiss if we're both standing at ground level, too, and he's never really complained about it). Most of the difference in height between Cloud and someone like Sephiroth is going to be in limb length, so if they're lying down, the height difference is essentially cancelled out. Oh, and anyone looking over the top of his head is likely to have their view obstructed by his hair.

* Cloud Strife is a bloke. His shoulders are canonically wider than his hips, and he has a masculine musculature. He doesn't look like a body-builder; he looks like what he is - a professional swordsman, who now does delivery work to earn a crust. This means he doesn't have a physique like the traditional "condom stuffed with walnuts" body-builder body. He has visible muscle, but it's not going to be "ripped" or particularly brilliantly defined, because he probably has a percentage of body fat over the top of it, as a reserve. If you want a modern-world visual example, find a short, wiry guy in his early twenties who works doing something extremely physical on a daily basis (such as bricklaying, gardening or similar), and then base the physique off that. Don't pick a gym junkie. Don't pick a body builder. Don't pick a weight lifter, boxer or other athlete. Don't pick a male stripper, either. Cloud's body is a tool; he uses it to move around a large chunk of metal at a speed which most people would find somewhat discomforting; he'll have the muscles needed to do that, and given being exposed to a version of the SOLDIER process would give him enhanced strength, he'll probably have less muscle bulk than would seem necessary on first sight. 

* Cloud's fighting style is going to be very much about strength and speed. Strength because he's using a ruddy huge sword. Speed because he isn't a big tall guy with a huge reach advantage. His switch to the fusion sword by the time of Advent Children is a move to take advantage of his speed as well as his strength, by dual-wielding two weapons. In effect, he combines the straight "tank" moves (using a large chunk of metal as a bludgeon and damaging enemies by hitting them hard with it) with a "rogue" fighting style (darting in quickly to strike accurately at critical points in order to cause damage) and can switch between both of these very easily. With the fusion swords, he can effectively use a large chunk of metal to dart in and cause damage by hitting critical points very hard indeed, which is why a lot of the fighting he does against human-shaped adversaries in "Advent Children" is under some form of handicap - either he's unable to use his full strength (because, for example, he's also trying to keep himself from wiping out on his bike, or he's up against someone who couldn't take it, or he's handicapped by geostigma), or he's up against Sephiroth. The one "even" fight he has is the one against Kadaj, and he beats Kadaj quite easily once they're both on the ground. Yes, he didn't defeat Rosso the Crimson in Dirge of Cerberus. But then, I've a strong suspicion Rosso was smart enough to back off when she realised just how dangerous Cloud was (plus she also had an appointment to go up against Vincent as a plot point... she is a sub-boss, after all).


	3. Timeline of Events in Final Fantasy VII canon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A summary timeline of events for FFVII, including Crisis Core, Advent Children, and Dirge of Cerberus.

Because some folks have problems with when various things happened in the FFVII timeline.

Key:  
(event) or (?) - an event which is stated or implied by canon, but not dated explicitly.  
[evidence] - evidence for timing of event

-2000 yrs (approx) - Meteor impacts on Gaia, carrying the virus which would later become known as Jenova. [in-game conversation and text]  
(at most -57 yrs - Vincent Valentine born, location unknown). [game handbook, in-game conversation]  
-45 yrs - Nanaki (Red XIII) born, presumably Cosmo Canyon [in-game conversation, game handbook]  
-40 yrs - Reeve Tuesti born (?) [pure guesswork, taking into account his idealism and his rank in Shinra at the start of the game]  
-35 yrs - Barret Wallace born, presumably Corel Village [game handbook]  
-32 yrs - Cid Highwind born, presumably Rocket Town region [game handbook]  
-30 yrs (?) - Unknown organism found fossilised in the bottom of the Northern Crater. Excavated by Shinra, named Jenova. [in-game conversations mostly refer to events "thirty years ago" in regard to the discovery of Jenova]  
(at most -30 yrs - Genesis Rhapsodos, Angeal Hewley and Sephiroth born, Nibelheim. Given the timeline in _"Crisis Core"_ , however, I'm more inclined to place Genesis' maximum age at 24, Angeal at 23, and Sephiroth at possibly 20 by the time of Nibelheim [Crisis Core interactions])  
(at least -25 yrs - Professor Gast is brought to realise that Jenova is not an example of the Cetra, but rather an alien life-form; this probably occurs during a visit to Cosmo Canyon, sometime after the birth of Sephiroth. Leaves Shinra as a result, and heads north to Icicle region, where he weds the Cetra called Ifalna [in-game discussions, discovery of record of Aerith's birth and her father's death])  
-25 yrs - Rufus Shinra born (?) [pure guesswork - he's old enough to be considered as a VP in Crisis Core]  
-23 yrs - Zack Fair born, Gongaga [birthplace from game conversations; age from Last Order OVA]  
-22 yrs - Aerith Gast born, Icicle Village [game handbook, in-game plot information]  
-22 yrs - Professor Gast murdered, Ifalna and Aerith Gast taken as experimental specimens by Professor Hojo.[in-game plot information]  
(-22 yrs - Professor Hojo becomes head of Shinra Science department, beating out Professor Hollander for the job. [implied from Crisis Core canon])  
-21 yrs - Cloud Strife born, Nibelheim [game handbook]  
-20 yrs - Tifa Lockheart born, Nibelheim [game handbook]  
-16 yrs - Yuffie Kisaragi born, Wutai [game handbook]  
-15 yrs - Ifalna and Aerith escape Shinra laboratories in Midgar; Ifalna dies on the steps of the Sector 7 station, asking Elmyra Gainsborough to take care of her daughter [in-game conversation]  
-14 yrs - Elmyra Gainsborough's husband killed, Wutai. (?) [implied via in-game conversation, occurs after Aerith starts living with Elmyra, but before Tseng approaches her]  
-12 yrs - Tseng of the Turks approaches Aerith Gainsborough, asking her to come back to Shinra. Aerith refuses. [implied via in-game conversations]  
(-9 yrs - Earliest possible point where Zack Fair could have joined SOLDIER (aged 14; I'm presuming his "starting mission" in Crisis Core is his graduation to 2nd class, shortly after reaching 3rd class, and quickly followed by his promotion to 1st class so he goes straight from a 3rd class blue uniform to a 1st class charcoal without stopping in the 2nd class purple).) [extrapolation from Last Order OVA and Crisis Core canon]  
(-8 yrs - Denzel born, Midgar city) [extrapolation from Advent Children canon]  
-7 yrs - Genesis Rhapsodos mutinies in Wutai, taking with him at least 1/3 of the then-current SOLDIER strength (at least 25 men); joined by Angeal Hewley following the raid on Fort Tamblin.  
(-7 yrs - End of the Wutai War (? Hard to tell when this ended, but I'm presuming it was before Cloud joined up).  
-7 yrs - Genesis Rhapsodos and clone troops raid Midgar, attempting to find a solution for degeneration.  
-7 yrs - Cloud Strife leaves Nibelheim for Midgar, aiming to get into SOLDIER [in game conversations]  
-7 yrs - Zack Fair winds up dropping in on Aerith Gainsborough's flower bed during a botched mission to capture any of Genesis Rhapsodos, Angeal Hewley or Professor Hollander.  
-7 yrs - Modeoheim mission - Zack Fair forced to kill his mentor, Angeal Hewley. Genesis Rhapsodos presumed dead. Zack Fair meets Cloud Strife for the first time. [Crisis Core canon]  
-7 yrs - Rufus Shinra appointed Vice President of Shinra Electric Power Company.  
-7 yrs - Defection of Lazard Deusericus from Shinra.  
-5 yrs - Last known contact between Zack Fair and his parents in Gongaga [in-game conversation]  
-5 yrs - Nibelheim mission - Sephiroth burns down Nibelheim, and beheads the Jenova specimen before being killed by Cloud Strife for the first time. [in-game conversations]  
-5 yrs - Tifa Lockhart escapes the destruction of Nibelheim despite having incurred a deadly injury from Sephiroth in an attempt to avenge the death of her father. Also misses being swept up in the grab of experimental subjects for Professor Hojo. [in-game revelations, and extrapolation since she's seen again 5 years later in Midgar hale and healthy].  
-5 yrs - Cloud Strife and Zack Fair taken as experimental subjects by Professor Hojo; ditto remaining population of Nibelheim. [in-game conversations and implied information from same]  
(-5 yrs - Nibelheim reconstructed and staffed with a Shinra-funded population to disguise Sephiroth's actions, not to mention Hojo's.) [implied by in-game conversations, plus Crisis Core Canon]  
-4 yrs - Construction starts on the North Corel mako reactor [in-game conversations]  
-4 yrs - Marlene Wallace born, North Corel [in-game conversations]  
-4 yrs - North Corel township burned to ground by Shinra in retaliation for "terrorist" activity. [in-game conversations]  
-4 yrs - Barrett Wallace gets gun fused to the stump of his right arm [in-game conversations]  
-3 yrs - Gongaga mako reactor explodes [in-game conversations]  
-3 yrs - Shinra No 26 rocket due to be launched from Rocket Town [in-game conversations]  
-3 yrs - Rocket Launch failure; Shinra decides to remove funding from their space program. [in-game conversations]  
-1 yr - Zack and Cloud escape from labs under the Shinra mansion in Nibelheim [Crisis Core canon, in-game conversations]  
-1 yr - Endgame events of "Crisis Core" [Crisis Core canon]  
-1 yr - Genesis Rhapsodos presumed dead again, Banora ruins; actually removed to Deepground complex. Lazard Deusericus actually deceased, Banora Ruins. [Crisis Core canon]  
-6 weeks - End of "Crisis Core"; Zack Fair dies on the cliffs overlooking Midgar; passes on the Buster Sword to Cloud Strife. [in-game conversations; Crisis Core canon]  
0 - Game starts with raid on Reactor 1 in Midgar. [game run-time]  
+1 day - Raid on Reactor 4. Destruction of mecha-soldier results in damage to the Plate. Cloud drops in on Aerith (literally). [game run-time events]  
+2 days - Tifa infiltrates Don Corneo's mansion to find out how Shinra learned the location of AVALANCHE. Aerith and Cloud go to rescue/help her (leading to the infamous "Cloud dresses in drag" scene). [in-game runtime event]  
+2 days (minimum) - Sector 7 plate dropped, Midgar. Reno badly injured fighting off AVALANCHE. Elena brought into the Turks. [There is a plot event sleep following the destruction of Reactor 1; another such plot-event sleep following Cloud's arrival at Aerith's house; a third plot-event sleep is possible if you do all the side-quests for the drag scene. Further timings will be based on the minimum timeline]  
+2 days - Aerith Gainsborough surrenders to the Turks in exchange for them allowing Marlene Wallace to remain with Elmyra Gainsborough. [implied through in-game conversations]  
+3 days - Cloud, Barret and Tifa attempt to infiltrate the Shinra tower to rescue Aerith. Rescue is successful, and they're also able to add Red XIII to their party, but they're captured by the Turks before they can escape. [game runtime]  
+4 days - Sephiroth (or at least, something which strongly resembles him, and appears to share a lot of the same grudges) raids the Shinra tower and kills President Shinra. The AVALANCHE crew are released from their cells as part of this raid. [game runtime]  
+4 days - Jenova specimen removed from containment tank on 58th floor of Shinra tower by person or persons unknown. Main suspect is Sephiroth. [implied, game runtime]  
+4 days - Rufus Shinra takes over the role of President of the Shinra Electric Power Company. [in-game event]  
+4 days - Remaining members of AVALANCHE escape Midgar city and flee toward Kalm. Subsequent timings are unpredictable.  
(+1 yr maximum - Cloud Strife kills Sephiroth for a second time with the help of AVALANCHE. Suspected minimum timing is approximately 1 month if we count all travel between towns as taking 1 day no matter what the distance).  
+1 yr - Game time ends with Holy drawing out the Lifestream to deal with Meteor over Midgar.  
+2 yrs - Events of "Advent Children" - Cloud Strife kills Sephiroth a third time. Hopefully this time it will stick.  
+3 yrs - Events of "Dirge of Cerberus" - Omega rises, Vincent Valentine separated from Chaos (this presumably leaves him with just the Galian Beast as a Limit form). Towns known to have been raided by Deepground include Junon, Kalm and Edge; following the raiding on Edge, it's unknown whether the Midgar area would have been resettled once more.  
+3 yrs - Genesis Rhapsodos revealed to be alive and (relatively) well and living in Deepground.  
+500 yrs - Endpiece of Nanaki and two smaller members of his race (children? grandchildren?) running through the Midgar hills to a cliff overlooking the now-overgrown ruins of Midgar City.


	4. Why The Guys from Final Fantasy VII Are Not Good Dating Partners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Sparked by a letter on the Captain Awkward site, from a letter writer who signed themselves "Am I Walking Away From Sephiroth or Cloud?")

Let's start with the big bad - Sephiroth. About the most charitable interpretation of his personality is that there might be a nice guy in there somewhere, but he's buried under being raised by one sociopath (Hojo) on behalf of another sociopath (Old Man Shinra) to become the uber-sociopath (Hojo is very blunt that he raised Sephiroth to become a God of the pagan subtype; none of them are precisely considerate of mortal social mores or morals). Sephiroth would, at the very least, require multiple years of extensive therapy before he could handle his own emotions, much less anyone else's - his breakdown in Nibelheim is pretty much an indication the man never really received much assistance with anger management (as a starting point). In addition, I'd argue very strongly the man is at the very least functionally asexual (his obsession with Cloud in the original game points to an intellectual fascination with something which defies him when it shouldn't be able to - if there's anything sexual in there, it's only sexual in the sense of Jenovan mitosis being the sexual behaviour of that organism). And all of that is leaving out the Oedipal tendencies and his psychotic obsession with his presumed mother.

Still on the big bad side, let's move on to the most prevalent example thereof, namely Hojo. Now, Hojo is clearly a sociopath, and probably extremely charismatic for all that. But he isn't likely to be interested in you as a person, because quite frankly as far as Hojo's concerned, he's the only Real Human Being on the planet. Everyone else is a potential specimen. Therapy won't help, because Hojo strikes me as being genuinely personality disordered, and the only thing therapy does for people with personality disorders (particularly unrepentant sociopaths like Hojo) is give them some jargon they can use to fool the unsuspecting (i.e. everyone else). What a pity Lucrecia Crescent couldn't have seen this before her erstwhile husband used her as the incubator for the Jenova Project, and then left her for dead. Plus, of course, he injected himself with Jenova cells as well.

Next up, Old Man Shinra. Not much known about him, but definitely a corporate sociopath, and definitely not the kind of person who cared much about being particularly faithful (we know he fathered Rufus on his wife; Rufus has at least one older half-sibling in Lazard Deusericus via one of his father's mistresses). Probably not a good choice if you're looking for emotional security.

Rufus Shinra? Raised by his old man to become another sociopathic chip off the old block. Rufus might not be an actual sociopath himself, but he can do a very good impersonation of one when he wants to. He's another who'd need extensive therapy over an extended period in order to break some bad habits - in Rufus' case, the ones which really need working on are his tendency to manipulate people toward his own ends, and his unwillingness to be seen to be vulnerable (we're told in the OG that "nobody has seen Rufus cry or bleed", which argues either some very potent myth-making, or a very solid set of emotional blocks which would preclude even the most rudimentary sort of empathy). 

Genesis Rhapsodos was chronically self-involved in his own psychodrama, and didn't have any attention to spare for anyone else. He was also self-centred to the point where he'd tear down the world rather than have anyone else take centre stage from him. Narcissistic is probably putting it mildly. Also probably not heterosexual - I'd argue homosexual, but primarily Narcissist in the original sense (sexually attracted mainly to himself). Genesis is an excellent example of the saw about the problem with men who are sensitive and in touch with emotions being the emotions they're in touch with are usually only their own.

Angeal Hewley was another who got caught up in his own psycho-drama to the point of chronic self-involvement, although quite frankly I find his twist on it even worse, since he decided to make someone who cared about him responsible for his death in order that he could feel sufficiently martyred. Which... no. For someone who was all about honour, that was possibly the most dishonourable thing he could possibly have done.

Heidegger and Palmer both strike me as being too caught up in their own greed for wealth and power to be able to spare the requisite emotional energy to be able to date. They'd be looking for arm candy, a good background, and good breeding hips, and if they can't get them all in the same place, they'll put the arm candy on salary, marry the background, and rent the hips by the hour. 

Reeve Tuesti? He could be a good partner, but only if you're willing to share him first with Shinra and then with the WRO (and you're willing to accept his work will always come first). I really see him as more married to his job than anything else.

Tseng has some rather creepy stalker-ish tendencies, and the skill to put them to use. It's up to you whether you find this reassuring or scary - possibly both. Plus he's another who puts the job first. 

Reno, by all accounts from canon, is not particularly stable or sane - he's probably another of Shinra's partially-tamed sociopaths (the corporation literally bred them) and as such you're dealing with someone who isn't really relationship material. 

Rude might be the most stable of the lot in the Turks, but I suspect you'd have a lot of trouble talking to him about anything - he doesn't seem the sort to use his words all that often. Plus of course... married to the job (and a job where his boss will quite literally expect his presence twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five).

Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo are all obsessive and Oedipal to a frightening degree. Loz appears to be emotionally and socially developmentally delayed; Yazoo is emotionally constipated or repressed to a terrifying level; and Kadaj is just straight out psychotic. Add in they've none of them really got any moral sense to speak of, and you have a bunch of guys who'd kill you as soon as look at you.

Zack Fair is probably the best bet, but Zack comes with two small issues which might need some consideration. Firstly, he's practically the poster child for ADHD, and you'd need to take that into account for any relationship. Don't expect ideal executive functioning from him, because he's going to swing between the attention span of a butterfly on cocaine, and the sort of hyper-focus which could be a bit creepy. Secondly, and more crucial by my way of thinking - he had that five years in Hojo's care, and almost certainly has some form of PTSD from that. Plus, of course, he's dead (and Aerith had dibs anyway, so you get to argue that one out with her).

Cid Highwind, while being the oldest of the batch (being an elder statesman in his mid thirties), does have a few defects as dating material. To start with, we know he's prone to head-up-the-arse syndrome (he suffered a massive case of it for the three years between the collapse of the Shinra space program, and the events leading up to Meteorfall; he may be over it as a result of meeting the rest of the AVALANCHE crew and discovering he firstly wasn't the only person to be hurt in the world, and secondly, wasn't even the worst hurt person in the world), which means if you were dating him, you'd have to be ready to kick him good and hard in the arse at the first sign of a recurrence, to dislodge things. Finally, I suspect Shera might have something to say about it.

Barrett Wallace is another of the elder statesmen of the group (in his early thirties) and his main problems are firstly, he suffers from the mental equivalent of horse blinkers (there's one way of looking at things, and it's his way or the highway), as well as a profound reluctance to consider alternative options to the ones he thinks up himself. He does come with an adopted daughter, who presumably has her own opinions about good and bad candidates for potential step-parenthood. His other main problem is he has a tendency to rush in without thinking and blurt out things without considering whether or not it's a good thing to say. All the tact of a brick through a window. If your arse looks big in that dress, you'll know about it.

Vincent Valentine? What can we say about Vincent. Well, let's start with the basics: he got dumped by the (married) woman he'd become obsessed with, and promptly proceeded to sulk about it for thirty years (okay, yeah, he got killed and merged with Chaos in between times, but quite frankly... thirty years is a bit of a while to carry on a resentful silence). This is not indicative of a person who is willing to communicate in an adult manner. Another candidate for the "years of therapy before we start dating" treatment.

Finally, let's look at the hero of the piece, Cloud Strife. Now, Cloud is basically trauma Grand Central. He starts off as a kid who was a socially isolated bully target in a small country town (only child of a single mother). He effectively crossed two continents to join the military at the age of fourteen (this is canon, from the Original Game, no less), which doesn't exactly argue for a particularly stable or healthy family life. He becomes a soldier in the Shinra army, desperately wants to become a SOLDIER in order to be strong enough to stick it to the folks back in his hometown, and flunks out of the exams (which he finds devastating). When he returns to his hometown, it's burned to the ground by a man he idolises, and his mother (with whom he apparently had a rather problematic relationship) is killed in the fire. He winds up killing Sephiroth, and is almost killed by him (the kid had a sucking chest wound, or a massive gut wound, depending on which version of the story you believe - either of those untreated will kill you) and is "rescued" by being found by Hojo. Who promptly dumps him in a mako tank and experiments on him for five years (starting with SOLDIER enhancements, and then essentially attempting to turn the kid into a replica of Sephiroth). By the end of this time he's suffering from his first bout of mako poisoning, which comes with traumatic amnesia and dissociative symptoms. He recovers from the mako poisoning just in time to see his best (and only?) friend killed in front of him by overwhelming force, and this so traumatises him that he dissociates completely and spends the next few months (at best estimate - it could be anything up to a year) believing he IS that friend. When we first run across him, the guy is suffering from blackouts and flashbacks strong enough to knock him to his knees in the middle of setting bombs, for crying out loud - he clearly has something which is probably best labelled as "complex PTSD" just to start with. He continues to dissociate while searching for a man who he doesn't remember he killed (he remembers fighting Sephiroth, but not what happened after that), suffering recurring breakdowns and dissociative episodes along the way (to the point where at one point he winds up thinking he's Sephiroth himself). During one of these, he nearly kills a team member, and then watches while Sephiroth kills her in front of him. When he finally confronts Sephiroth, he winds up completely breaking down, and thinking of himself as merely an extension of Sephiroth's personality. He then gets his second bout of mako poisoning, which renders him catatonic and unable to respond to external stimuli. By the time he recovers from this second bout, he's managed to recover from the earlier traumatic amnesia to a degree, but he's still confused as to which of the realities he has in his skull is his own, and which of them belong to other people (and the presence of Jenova is probably Not Helping At All, either). By the time the original game ends, he's killed Sephiroth for the second time. 

He then goes on to try and deal with the massive case of extremely complex PTSD he's suffering from pretty much solo - no competent psychiatric or psychological help, and most of his friends don't seem to understand what they're looking at either. He winds up isolating himself from contact, and the coming of geostigma and his subsequent infection seems to accentuate existing depressive and suicidal tendencies. By the time of Advent Children, he's apathetic, disinterested, and still grieving the loss of both Zack and Aerith (and arguably still suffering dissociative episodes, since he seems to believe he speaks with them in the Lifestream - that this is accurate doesn't mean he isn't dissociating when it happens). By the end of Advent Children, he's pretty much started to figure out he has to connect with other people a bit more often, and that he does have resources in his friends. But I still doubt he's fully recovered - if indeed a "full recovery" to what most people would consider "normal" is even a possibility for him.

Quite frankly, if you were saying you wanted someone like Cloud, I'd be saying your best bet would be long and extensive therapy of your own. Besides which, Tifa has dibs (although why she'd want to is beyond me).


	5. Final Fantasy VII Tarot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tarot major arcana, based on Final Fantasy VII

The Fool - Reno

The Magician - Zack

The Empress - Scarlet

The Emperor - Sephiroth

The High Priestess - Aerith

The Heirophant - Tseng

The Lovers - Professor Gast and Ifalna

The Chariot - Rufus Shinra and the Turks

Justice - Shelke

The Hermit - Vincent Valentine

The Wheel of Fortune - The Golden Saucer

Strength - Tifa fighting Loz (AC)

The Hanged Man - Vincent as Chaos (from DoC)

Death - Kadaj, Yazoo and Loz

Temperance - The Turks (or just Reno/Rude)

The Devil - General Heidegger

The Tower - Meteor coming in on Midgar

The Star - Marlene

The Moon - Cloud in a mako tank

The Sun - Cid Highwind (steering the Shera)

Judgement - Omega rising (DoC)

The World - Cloud smiling (AC)


	6. Zack Fair is Young, not Stupid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My headcanon about Zack Fair, inspired by _Crisis Core_

Zack Fair is a pretty standard young adult male from a rural background. He grew up in a happy family, and ran off to the military to pursue his dreams (or possibly got packed off and waved goodbye by parents who pointed out if he was going to keep chasing the girls in Gongaga, he was going to be answering to the title of "dad" long before he would have wanted to do so). So when he enters Shinra, it's with a mind which isn't set to automatically disbelieve the propaganda he's grown up reading, or pick up the political nuances of what's going on in the background. He's young, he's inexperienced, he grew up in a small town where the entire population could fit comfortably into a single corporate department, and he has no idea what the heck is going on around him when he gets plunged into the depths of Shinra politics.

I suspect this was at least half the reason Angeal took him on as a mentee - because in Zack, Angeal saw himself, before the war and the truth of what he was made to be took its toll. And let's not forget - _Crisis Core_ basically makes it much more likely that the three generals of SOLDIER were all much younger than previously supposed - the OG puts Sephiroth's maximum age at the time of Nibelheim as being 25; _Crisis Core_ makes me, at least, automatically pull it back at least two or three years from that. My head-canon is at the time of the Nibelheim Event, Sephiroth is barely 20 - he's about 25 months older than Zack (Sephiroth is a late October Scorpio baby; Zack is an early December Saggitarius). 

(I'm 47 next birthday. Sephiroth these days looks very young to me, and he's getting younger every year. Painfully so). 

So at least half the problem Zack has is a combination of lack of experience of the sort of politics which runs rampant in Shinra (I tend to slot Lazard in as being around 30 at the time of _Crisis Core_ \- about twice Zack's age, and a good ten years older than the Generals, plus he's a city boy raised to deal with Shinra politics; Rufus is about the same age as Sephiroth), and lack of life experience overall. Young people around their late teens and early twenties are at their most passionate, their most idealistic, and their most easily disillusioned stage of life - and it's _not_ a fault in them, it's just a consequence of not having enough life experience to see the way things tend to go.

(Cloud Strife, canonically, is a touch more cynical than Zack, because Cloud has seen the rough end of the human behavioural pineapple up close and personal a few too many times to be able to be overly idealistic about his fellow human beings. And what will do _that_ is a lifetime of being the bully target). 

So Zack isn't stupid - he's young, idealistic and optimistic. Trust me, the two can look extraordinarily similar at times. 

(Plus, as per Joudama's head canon, _Crisis Core_ Zack is the poster child for ADHD. So there's some legitimate executive functioning issues tied up in things, which is why there are so many problems getting him to do paperwork.)


End file.
